The allegations that Ward Churchill may have plagiarized or used a false Indian ancestry to get a job and a scholarly audience are old news in the Indian and academic worlds.

Churchill, 57, identified himself as an Indian when he applied to the University of Colorado in the late 1980s. When he was hired, the university noted that he was an Indian. He received tenure without the normal review in what was described as a “special opportunity” hire in an effort to diversify the ethnic makeup of the faculty.

Three years later, Indian activists wrote then-dean Charles Middleton to question Churchill’s Indian ancestry.

“Mr. Churchill has only become a Native American within the last 10 years,” read one 1994 letter to Middleton. “…(B)efore that he was known as what he is a Caucasian.”

Churchill’s personnel file reflects that the “university looked into this matter,” according to a letter from Middleton to one of the complainers, but nothing was done after the university decided that as long as Churchill identified himself as an Indian, he could be counted as an Indian.

As far back as 1996, John LaVelle, now a law professor at the University of New Mexico, published a review of a Churchill essay in an academic journal, accusing Churchill of shoddy scholarship and plagiarizing others’ ideas.

Others complained, including a Lamar University professor who is writing a paper disputing the scholarship behind Churchill’s allegation that the Army spread smallpox to Indians in the 1800s. A Canadian university professor complained at her school that Churchill had plagiarized her work too.

None of the allegations and complaints about Churchill mattered to CU administrators until a student at Hamilton College published parts from an essay Churchill wrote after the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks.

But even the existence of Churchill’s controversial ideas about the U.S. should not have been a surprise to CU.

More than a year ago, now-CU Boulder interim chancellor Phil DiStefano, who released the committee’s report Thursday, received a complaint from a Minnesota man who had heard Churchill speak.

“The heart of his talk, however, as suggested by the title, was his advocacy of the violent overthrow of the United States government,” the e-mail complaint said.

DiStefano forwarded the complaint to Churchill’s boss, Arts and Sciences dean Todd Gleeson. He was also on the committee that referred the Churchill complaint to the faculty Thursday.

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